A year ago, 9 students from Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Peru arrived at UWC Costa Rica as the fourth cohort of Grieg Scholars. Today they are in their final year at the College, when they will decide what comes next and where they will continue their university studies.
Learning from each other
The first year asked a lot of them: a new academic system, a second language, and family thousands of kilometers away. With a full scholarship, they could focus on what mattered most: learning, adapting and growing. They shared rooms with classmates from Luxembourg, Taiwan, Austria, Vietnam, Italy, India and Nigeria, and within a few months those strangers became family. As one scholar from Guatemala put it: “From the very first day, I was never the same person who got on the plane to leave my country.”
Learning from nature
Costa Rica became their classroom. With Indigenous communities, they planted fruit trees, restored trails, and cared for seed banks. A scholar from Peru came back with a new understanding of land: not as a resource, but as part of a community’s identity. Others restored school gardens near our future campus in San Isidro and led composting and eco-brick projects on campus.
Serving humanity and our planet
By the end of the year, the newcomers had become the people others turn to. Their peers elected five as Residence Assistants, and they are now the first faces new students meet. They lead service with children and older adults and facilitate Agents of Change camps for Costa Rican youth. Their work is already reaching home: one scholar won a College grant to paint murals about cultural pride in public schools in Guatemala.
For a lifetime
As graduation approaches, the question has changed from “Will I fit in?” to “Where will I go, and how will I serve?” Some dream of medicine or neuroscience; others of human rights, economics or design. Wherever they go, they will carry a way of learning and serving that does not end with the IB Diploma. The first Grieg Scholars, Class of 2021, already show where this road leads: they have finished university and are building their own careers and ventures.
Grieg Foundation, a partner for impact
Behind each of these stories is a long-term commitment. Since 2006, the Grieg Foundation has been one of UWC Costa Rica’s closest partners: it sustained the College through its first years as the only UWC in Latin America, made our Santa Ana campus possible and is helping build our new campus in San Isidro de Heredia. Since 2019, the Grieg Scholars Program has brought 36 young people from 13 countries to the College on full scholarships, so that talent and commitment, not family income, decide who can come. Each cohort brings our mission to life: to cultivate in young people the passion and ability to serve humanity and our planet, learning from nature and from each other, for a lifetime.